N50m Seized Goods To Be Forfeited To FG
Justice Abdulaziz Anka of the Federal High Court in Lagos on Thursday ordered the final forfeiture of some illegally imported goods valued at N50,151,606 seized by the Nigeria Customs Service Board to the Federal Government.
Justice Anka, who is the vacation judge sitting in the Lagos Division of the court, made the order while ruling on an ex parte application brought before him by the Nigeria Customs Service Board on August 14, 2017.
The goods affected by the order include bales of fairly used clothes, shoes, bags, bed sheets, porcelain plates, 7,163 bags of foreign parboiled rice, and 147 jerry cans of vegetable oil, and were said to have been intercepted between April and June, 2017.
Others are seven vehicles whose values were, however, not stated.
While arguing the application on Monday, the agency’s Assistant Legal Adviser Federal Operations Unit, Zone A, Ikeja, Shehu Bodinga said the owners refused to show up after the goods were intercepted.
Bodinga had urged the judge that there was an urgent need to order the forfeiture of the goods because some of them were perishable.
The Customs, according to him, had been ordered by The Presidency to distribute some of the seized items to victims of the Boko Haram insurgency living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in the North-East.
In a 15-paragraph affidavit attached to the application and personally deposed to by Bodinga, he averred that the goods were imported into the country in breach of Section 46(c) of the Customs and Management Act.
According to him, in some cases, the importers and their privies attempted to evade duty on the imported goods or the items they brought into the country were prohibited by law.
He said, “Apart from acts of fraudulent evasion of duty, some of the defaulters brought in outrightly unlawful and prohibited items, which are so classified by the Customs laws and regulations.
“I verily believe that because of the severity of the punishment and sanction attached to the offences, the defaulters, along with their collaborators, have refused and or failed to come forward to claim the goods from the Nigeria Customs Service, thereby, abandoning same and same seized.”
“In order to prevent complete deterioration of the said goods and total loss of revenue to the Nigeria Customs Service, the board now intends to sell the goods either by way of auction, allocation or by any other procedure.
“I verily believe that searches have been conducted in the court registry and there is no evidence of any court actions pending against the application in respect of the items, hereby sought to be condemned as forfeited to the applicant,” Bodinga added.